Southeast Asia is still obsessed with marrying or looking like Westerners

Fairer skin holds a higher status, as darker tones are associated with labourers and farmers, the lower-classes.

A page from a government-approved textbook in the Philippines is now the subject of debate on social media for its depiction of Filipino features as inferior to Westerners’.

Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña had uploaded the page last Thursday to his Facebook account:

In a story about family members, the text describes the mother as: “unlike most Filipinos, she has curly hair that makes her more beautiful. She looks like a mestiza with her pointed nose and white fair skin.”

According to Politiko Visayas, the learning material was one issued by the Department of Education, which have yet to issue a statement on this.

Fair skin is exalted in the Philippines, hence the existence of an entire industry dedicated to the selling of products and services to lighten brown skin. In Asia, an estimated US$18 billion is spent per year to appear pale.

At Filipino Youtube star’s Raf Juane’s channel, the most popular videos are of his experiences using skin-whitening creams and intravenous injections to lighten his skin. Such videos get close to a quarter million views on YouTube.

Fairer skin holds a higher status, as darker tones are associated with labourers and farmers, the lower-classes.

But the Philippines is hardly the only Southeast Asian country with this problem.

In Indonesia, the interracial marriage of an Indonesian woman to her New Zealander boyfriend has gotten more media fanfare last week than yet another one of the thousands of interracial marriages between Indonesian and foreigners actually merits.

While it is up to a publication to highlight Sri Rahayu and Ezra Liam Honan’s marriage, the problem lies in how the articles have been angled.

Their marriage had first gone viral on social media before local news outlets picked it up. Comments from netizens took the usual condescending slant towards the 21-year-old Sri, ie. how a babysitter who looks like her can marry the 20-year-old Honan, portrayed as a handsome retail manager working in Australia.

And when news outlets carried the story, the tone and angle were similarly patronising towards Sri, painting her as ugly or lucky to be marrying her husband, a “handsome foreigner”.

To which, she replied: “I don’t think ‘how much’ duit hantaran matters, what matters is the long lasting relationship and marriage, a woman is not an object and £££££££ duit hantaran does not mean you are valued higher compared to other women.” – Asian Correspondent

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